The Vinyl Princess

by Yvonne Prinz

  Aidan, the only employee at Bob’s who never has to deal with the public, skulks past me. Aidan takes misanthropy to a whole new level. He turns his head slightly my way as acknowledgment (I see you but I don’t want to talk to you) and nods almost imperceptibly. Aidan prices and processes in a tiny room in the back affectionately known as the Cave. He’s tall and whisper thin with a sort of a bloodless look to him. He disappears into his environment like a chameleon. It seems that his only desire in life is not to be noticed. He also owns, I’ve heard, a pretty badass record collection that took most of his lifetime to accumulate.

  “Good morning, Aidan,” I greet him enthusiastically. I’ve spent two years trying to pry him loose. Also, truthfully, I want to underline a contrast between us: I’m extra-effervescent around him because I see some of myself in him and sometimes it scares me.

  “Morning,” he says quietly, and then he’s gone.

  “Hey, what’s that Frank Zappa album with the song about frosting a cake?” asks my first customer, a kid dressed like a perp. He’s got a black baseball cap pulled down over his eyes and he’s wearing guyliner. Bits of oily dark hair poke out from underneath his cap, which matches his too-big black satin jacket with red trim. It’s zipped all the way up to his pale thin neck. He reeks of cheap cologne, meant to mask days of BO, and it’s not working.

  “Sheik Yerbouti,” I tell him, and look back down at my magazine.

  “You got a used copy of that?”

  “I saw one out there yesterday. Did you check the section?”

  “Nah. What’s that under?”

  “Z.” I look at him like he must be kidding.

  “Right. Z.” He wanders away.

  Should I have taken him by the hand and led him over to the Zappa? No. I won’t spoon-feed the customers. If you don’t know your alphabet, you have no business leaving your house, let alone shopping for premium music.

  The store slowly fills up with shoppers and I close my magazine. Blind Bill and his companion, Jeff, are still scouring the blues section. Jeff recites the songlists off the backs of CDs to Bill while Lucy sleeps next to them on the floor. They practically live here. Chet Baker’s sweet, sad voice fills the room singing “My Funny Valentine.” He sounds so hopeful that it’s hard to believe he eventually jumped out a window in Amsterdam. Some people say he was pushed. I know better.

  Employees are no longer allowed to choose the music that plays in the store. Bob fills the six-CD carousel before he goes home every night, and if we touch anything other than the play button on the stereo we risk losing all Bob & Bob’s privileges, which include borrowing anything in the store for up to two weeks. This rule came about when certain employees started dominating the CD player and certain other employees got bent out of shape about it and one thing led to another and someone got hit in the head with the edge of a CD case and had to go to the emergency room and get eleven stitches. Just for the record, it was a Mötley Crüe CD. So now Bob has to make it in before the entire carousel has played or anarchy will undoubtedly ensue. Fortunately, my musical tastes often intersect with Bob’s. I like about half the stuff he loads into the carousel.

  Bob appears at noon, disheveled and sleepy. He’s wearing a tissue-thin T-shirt advertising a Who concert (that he undoubtedly attended) over another T-shirt that I remember from yesterday. He’s not a man who makes complicated wardrobe decisions. His wife, Dao, follows him through the door. Dao and Bob met on one of Bob’s many trips to Thailand and they were married on the beach in Phuket six years ago. Dao is all sweetness and smiles until you cross her, and we all know better than that now. Her English isn’t very good despite the fact that she always seems to be taking an English class somewhere. I’ve suggested to Bob that maybe we should all take Thai lessons and make things a whole lot easier around here. Dao memorizes words she hears on television but she often confuses the definitions. She uses the word runway for road and top for good, and guest for friend and pop for put and nation for any sort of place. I like Dao a lot even though we have a tough time communicating. She’s informed me many times that I’m a “top guest” to her. Bob adores Dao but they fight like cats and dogs. Dao might be one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her hair is about nine feet long and cascades down her back in a shiny blue-black river. Her features are small and delicate. She has a habit of turning her head to one side when she doesn’t quite understand you. This is usually followed by a wide smile, featuring perfectly straight white teeth. You can’t help but smile right back at her. She can even get Laz to smile. Dao is Bob’s third wife and the only one I’ve met. The veteran staff members say she’s the favorite so far by a long shot. There’s a rumor that the first two wives are buried in Bob’s backyard. Bob can be difficult.

  Dao chirps a smiley “Hello” to everyone as she passes the counter on her way to the office in the back. She was an accountant back in Thailand and she works on the books here at Bob’s. Over her shoulder she’s carrying a large bright red handbag roughly half her size. It obscures her tiny body and makes her look like a tomato with legs.

  Bob stops directly in front of me at the counter.

  “Al? Who’s that in sound tracks?” He points backward over his shoulder. I follow his finger.

  Shorty and Jam, two street people who are regularly ejected from the store, look like they’re reenacting a bar fight. Shorty is hanging on to Jam’s foot, which is up in the air.

  “So I grabbed his foot like this and I stopped the kick. I stopped it dead,” says Shorty.

  “No way. No goddamn way!” says Jam, his eyes wide in disbelief.

  I look at Bob. “We let them back in, remember?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to throw them out?”

  “No. I’ll talk to them.”

  He walks over to sound tracks. Shorty and Jam start flipping through vinyl musicals when they see Bob approach. Shorty pulls out a vinyl copy of The Sound of Music and pretends to read the back of it.

  “Guys. You need to chill or I’ll toss you out again, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay, Bob, you bet,” says Shorty.

  Jam stands at attention and salutes Bob. Bob walks back to the office, his shoulders slumped, sighing and shaking his head. Shorty and Jam are a good example of the type of street people who spend most of their time on the avenue. Their behavior ranges from harmless to annoying to extremely cantankerous. These two are unusual even for Telegraph Avenue, because in addition to abusing drugs and alcohol, they also dabble in cross-dressing; they like to wear women’s clothing. Not generally a whole outfit; usually just a flourish here and there. Like today, for instance, Jam is wearing a pale pink polyester blouse with a ruffle down the front and Shorty is carrying a beaded handbag.

  Jennifer, our resident goth chick and my relief on the cash register, saunters in at twelve fifteen. She’s always late and she always has a great excuse. The expression she paints on her otherwise expressionless face daily is slightly smudged at the eyebrows. Jennifer is our least helpful employee unless you happen to be looking for Dead Can Dance or the Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees.

  “Sorry,” she says, but she’s not. “The damn bus breaks down and we all have to pile off like a bunch of refugees while they find another one for us, like there’s just going to be an extra bus sitting around somewhere that they can send right over, like we live in Mayberry or something.”

  “So, did they find one?”

  She shrugs. “I dunno, I took off, got a cab and blew ten bucks on the fare.” She yanks off her leather motorcycle jacket and throws it under the register. She checks her slash of red lipstick in a little mirror she keeps in a drawer at the counter and smooths her skirt over her fishnet stockings. She reties the laces on her knee-high Doc Martens and stands up.

  “Well, I’m going to lunch.” I hate to rain on her rant but I’m late. Jennifer is a victim and lives to complain. She has twenty-seven ex-boyfriends who all did her wrong, parents who abused her, countless friends who abandoned he
r and an entire system working against her. She’ll still be ranting when I get back.

  “Go, go. I’m here. Who said you had to wait?” she asks impatiently.

  I walk out the front door into the glare and head up the street, past the head shops and two bookstores, to Swarma, a vegetarian Indian joint. I’m meeting my friend Kit for lunch. She works at a vintage-clothing store just up the avenue from Bob’s, and when we’re both on the street, we try to eat together. She’s seated at a table in the window when I arrive. She’s already spooning dal soup into her mouth. Kit wears vintage like no one else. Her outfits look like they were put together by a team of professional costume designers. Today she’s wearing an off-white silk blouse with a burgundy velvet fitted vest and a black pleated miniskirt with chunky Mary Jane heels. By contrast, I am wearing a Blondie T-shirt and skinny jeans in need of a wash. I look like the person who should be carrying her luggage.

  “Man, are you late. I ordered. Got you the spinach paneer. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Fine.” I pull out a chair across from her and sit down. “Jennifer was late again.”

  “Bitch. What’s with that chick?”

  I shrug and snap off a piece of papadam. I dip it into a small bowl of mango chutney. A waitress puts a fragrant metal bowl of dark green spinach paneer and a plate of fluffy Frisbee-size discs of naan bread on the table between us.

  “Thanks.” I smile at her. I take a sip of my water and dig in.

  I’ve known Kit since preschool. We’re very tight. We feel the same way about almost everything but we’re nothing alike. Kit gets a lot of attention from guys. She coyly pretends not to notice but she knows how to flirt and she does it shamelessly (I am the absolute worst at flirting unless you count blushing violently when a guy looks at me); she’s petite (oh, how the boys love that); and she’s got enough confidence for both of us. Kit has a sense of feminine adventure that I envy. One of her most admirable qualities is that she can change her mind about anything, unapologetically, at the last second. Somehow, even the nastiest of baristas and waiters don’t seem to mind. I have a habit of letting her sit in the driver’s seat in these matters. She chickened out of a tattoo a few months ago and I followed suit. We opted for piercings instead (hers is a navel ring and mine was a nose ring until three days later, when I got it caught on a cardigan, which turned out to be a blessing because it’s since occurred to me that the whole world, or at least my whole world, is either tattooed or pierced).

  Kit also handpicked the boy who delivered each of us our first kiss after rejecting several other candidates at the last second. I should probably also mention that we were eight and we each had to give him a dollar. I can’t remember a time when Kit didn’t have a boyfriend. I can’t remember a time when I did. Kit is handbags and high heels to my backpacks and Converse sneakers. Kit would never set foot on a skateboard, let alone consider it a mode of transportation, and I couldn’t live without mine.

  In matters pertaining to music, however, Kit lets me lead and she does not judge. I could show up at her house with The Best of the Partridge Family under my arm and she’d say, “Cool. Let’s put it on.” Her knowledge of music runs deep and she has a small collection of rare picture-sleeve 45s, but she’s no match for me.

  Kit is telling me all about the road trip she and her boyfriend, Niles, are planning for next summer. Niles is a bass player in a garage band called Auntie Depressant. They met when Niles came into the vintage store looking for stage clothes. Kit sold him a white shirt with ruffles on the cuffs and a pair of women’s leather capri pants. When I met Niles, I immediately pegged him as one of those guys who works hard to look a lot more dangerous than he is. He went to private school in the Oakland Hills, and his techno-geek parents paid for his private bass guitar lessons. He somehow never has any money and Kit ends up paying for almost everything. Admittedly, he’s adorable, and Kit loves him, so I’ve never shared my real feelings about him with her.

  Kit and I have our distinct roles in this relationship. She is the outgoing boy magnet who always arrives with a good story about a boy, and I am the faithful, long-suffering best friend who listens to it and then offers up advice, pretending that I could possibly be qualified to do that.

  Kit already has their route mapped out on a dog-eared road map of the U.S. she carries everywhere with her. They’re planning on stopping at every kitschy roadside attraction and every indie record store that they can find along the way. Kit’s been saving money for this trip for over a year now. I’m going to assume that Niles hasn’t saved a dime.

  Kit starts to describe to me a record store on her road-trip itinerary, a place called Hot Poop in Walla Walla, Washington, that she found online this morning. It’s right next to a vintage-clothing store called Sunset Boulevard. I have a forkful of spinach in midair when he walks past the window. It’s him again. Two sightings in a day? Unprecedented. I drop my fork and look up at him. He sees me too. He has the most unusual eyes: pale blue-green but dark rimmed, like an Egyptian cat. Kit sees him too.

  “Who is that?” she asks, abandoning the road-trip highlights.

  I shrug. “I dunno. Probably a customer,” I say, embarrassed about my possible crush on a total stranger.

  She cranes her neck to watch behind her as he disappears up the avenue. “Cute.”

  She’s right. He is cute. I grin at Kit and dip my fork into the spinach again.

  Chapter 2

  My mom and I live in an ancient low-slung house in the Elmwood District, seven and a half minutes from Bob & Bob’s by skateboard. This time of year the wisteria vines dangle the last of their lacy purple flowers through a trellis that hangs over a deep porch out front, where two old, sagging wicker chairs sit empty most of the time. We rarely sit out here, even though it looks pretty inviting. A glass pitcher of frosty lemonade and a basket of mending would look right at home on the little table between the chairs, but we’re not the Waltons; we’re the Westons, and half of us live somewhere else.

  About a year ago, at yet another cocktail party featuring academic blowhards spouting off about something they read in a book or wrote in a book (and likely stole from another book), my mom was discussing her dissertation topic, Pushkin’s poetry, with a colleague from her PhD program when my dad turned to her and told her that he didn’t want to be married to her anymore. My mom reached for a cheese puff and asked him why not. He said that he didn’t think she completed him. My mom was mystified by this. She’d never really completed anything in her life. Half-finished crossword puzzles were scattered about the house, half-read books, half-read articles; piles of clothes that could be worn if they were ironed sat in a basket under the ironing board; half-eaten food filled the fridge; and her half-written dissertation sat in a jumbled pile next to her computer under a half-eaten apple. How on earth could she be expected to complete another human being if she’d never even finished a carton of yogurt?

  My dad moved out shortly after that conversation and moved in with Kee Kee, who lives on a massive spread in Santa Cruz. I’m not sure if Kee Kee “completes” my dad, but she’s completely rich, so that probably helps. Kee Kee’s dad invented some sort of medical software that changed the world (he couldn’t have known how much it would change my world) and he bought Kee Kee a ranch, so now all she has to do is ride her very expensive Austrian horses all day and kick the help around. While we’re on the subject, why are rich girls who ride large animals always named after small dogs? Anyway, my dad hates horses, so he “dabbles” in real estate, a career he sort of fell into when he retired from playing drums in a band. Real estate offices in California are filled with ex–rock stars. They put on suits and pretend they know how to golf, but every now and then a tattoo will emerge from under a sleeve or a skull ring will show up on a finger or a roach clip will peek out of a car ashtray on the way to an open house.

  Now my dad and I talk on the phone about things that never mattered when we lived under the same roof, like the weather and school. Sometimes he’ll
drive to Berkeley and we’ll go somewhere stupid to eat. Ever since he moved out, my dad treats me like an appliance that he just pulled from a box and hasn’t read the manual for yet. He has no idea how to make it work. Sometimes he’ll try to inject Kee Kee into the conversation; like he’ll say, “Kee Kee thinks—” and I’ll say, “Whoa, stop right there; we both know Kee Kee doesn’t think.” And then he’ll sigh and say, “I wish you would try to get to know her.” And I’ll say, “Dad, she listens to Dave Matthews. It’s not gonna happen.”